


A Little Night Music

by twistedchick



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Broken Wings, Clan Mitchell, Other, Stargate SG-1 AU: Howling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-21
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:58:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving Seattle, Spence tries to put things together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Night Music

When the hotel room door shuts behind him, Spence drops his bag and stands very still for a moment.

It's over.

He rolls his shoulders, rotates his head on his neck and feels the strain begin to lessen. It's relief, the release of muscles too long tense, not only physical muscles but the psychological and psychic ones needed for him to play traitor, conspirator, out-for-the-bucks self-interested creep.

He walks over to the bed, sits down, and lets himself have the full-body case of the shakes that has been impending ever since he found Ba'al in his room to negotiate the fine points of their plan and, not incidentally, to check him out. At the time it had felt closer to a pass than an inspection, the intent, nearly unwinking gaze like a laser burning through him from those too-ophidian eyes.  
_  
\--nearly burned for good on that op in the lab in Iraq when the researchers' laser swiveled and scorched a path an inch deep into the concrete wall, if he hadn't gone flat on the floor inside a breath --  
_  
No, it's over and he's going to let himself have the nervous breakdown he's been deserving for the past month. Not least of which is due to finding out just exactly who Cam's partner really is.

Hadn't been hard to see that JD wasn't just some teenager, or some guy whose hormones hadn't caught up to his age (calendar or other.) Then he'd watched the skinny, gentle guy with his cousin, with his aunt, with the kids, and thought he was seeing the kind of undercover job he'd been trained in, back in the 720th. But why? When he and Skipper had lifted JD's ID and traced him, then faced him down, they'd ended up with a career change and more questions than could be answered. And JD was still an enigma, but that enigma was getting up at ungodly o'clock to take care of his partner's late brother's baby and holding Cam together as well as being there for all of the other Mitchells, despite suspicion and mistrust from certain quarters...

In the 720th they tell you to question everything, check your preconceptions at the door with your other identity, and follow your instinct. Nobody is ever all one thing, good or bad. Put the pieces together.

JD is kind and thoughtful. JD loves Cam so much; without him Cam wouldn't be/wasn't the same, and neither would Aunt Sassy. JD is careful with children, caretaking with those who need it, friendly and fun and plays wicked good poker with the uncles. He can cook a little, enough to get by, guy-type cooking, though he was picking up more just by being around Mitchells. He works hard. He doesn't have family except for Mitchells...

And JD is/was Batshit Jack O'Neill, who was at one time the man whose tactical papers and (unclassified) reports were used for training in the 720th. "That was fucking batshit, man" was the highest compliment in the unit. JD is/was the leader of SG-1, the man who convinced the highest-ranking Jaffa in Apophis's army to trade his fortune on a new life, the man who downloaded the Ancient database into his brain twice, who made common cause with the Asgard and (it was rumored) had actually gone fishing with Thor, the Asgard leader, at the O'Neill family cabin in Minnesota.

JD is/was Brigadier General Jonathan O'Neill, director of Homeworld Security, leading the most secret part of the Pentagon in protecting the planet, not just the local territory.

JD had spent the last six months as the all-but-Jaffa assistant-with-benefits of half a dozen or more Goa'ulds, all named Ba'al, all but one of them trying to take over Earth as home base so they could take over Earth's allies.

It helps if Spence doesn't think about the sex part of it. He's never gonna get to sleep if he has to see that behind his eyelids.

No wonder Cam's looked like someone ran him through a food mill with worry and stress, this past few months, not to mention the no-longer-quiet comments from Uncle Everett, among others. Cam's been in on this from the start, aware of everything going on, knowing what he was sending his partner into, knowing what the cost might be.

Spence's head hurts. He gets up long enough to strip off his clothes, shoves the covers back and flops into bed. He surely needs the time to close his eyes, even if he isn't fully asleep. His eyes are still tingling a little, and isn't that an interesting observation? He touches them gently with his fingertips, reassuring himself that they're still where they should be, in the bony sockets in his face, and his face is still in one piece.

The base shrinks are gonna have a time with him. If they let him back ... No, think about that later. O'Neill will take care of him; O'Neill has never left a man behind and he takes care of his team/command/planet...

Images flicker through his mind: O'Neill's face, lines worn deep, but the same dark eyes as JD's, though nowhere as near open or trusting. The way JD talked to Aunt Sam on the phone as if they were not only the same generation but as if they had been friends for -- well, O'Neill had been her commander for a decade, more or less. Aunt Sam at Thanksgiving, peeling potatoes for Aunt Sassy while her large friend listens to the children tell him stories and follows along while they show him their kittens and toys --

Large friend with the gold Goa'uld tattoo on his forehead --

Spence's eyes flicker open.

Aunt Sam had brought Teal'c to Thanksgiving at home, not some South African professor. This was the warrior whom O'Neill had suborned away from Apophis on first meeting, O'Neill's closest alien friend. He could only have been there to check out JD. And JD had hidden himself away until after pizza (so he'd heard from Jessie -- he hadn't gotten there for that holiday), had acted casual around "Murray" until the two of them had gone out on the porch to talk, later. (Jessie had sworn she hadn't actually been listening in, but with her room just above the porch roof and the window open for air, the voices had kept interrupting her. Not the words, the sound of the voices. She'd said she almost put her book down and went out to see what was happening, because JD sounded like he was about to cry and she couldn't stand that. JD was a okay guy; he was her friend. She wasn't happy if he was upset.) That had to have been something to do with the Seattle op.

No, he doesn't want to know. It's over. He will debrief tomorrow and get assigned to a shrink --

He doesn't know what will happen once he's back. But O'Neill said he'd take care of things, and if O'Neill is like JD, he's not going to have to worry too much about his future.

He's getting tireder, the stress of undercover finally starting to leave his muscles.

O'Neill is like JD, even if he can't show it. And O'Neill never leaves anyone behind. He's famous for taking care of his people, whether it's a renegade Jaffa or a bunch of little gray men or the Cimmerrians or the Edorans or any of the hundreds of other peoples on other planets with whom Earth has treaties and negotiations, thanks to Jack Batshit O'Neill.

He doesn't know what's coming, but he doesn't have to. It'll be all right.

He wakes, gasping, sitting straight up in the darkness and listens hard. Air conditioner hum, a truck rumbling past on the interstate, a little rain on the window, nothing more.

The dream had been full-on imagery, all senses engaged, and it had horrified him. JD, beaten and battered, dumped into the sarcophagus by men in ancient Egyptian garb that he recognized as Ba'al's traditional Jaffa. JD emerging, without his tattoos, without any injuries, to be dragged away, then hauled back dead again, put into the box, brought back, over and over.

But this hadn't happened to JD, the part of his mind that was still working told him. JD had found the one Ba'al who was disinclined to want to rule the world, the one who actively feared death and who wanted to make a deal in order to live...the one who didn't use the sarcophagus.

Why was he getting this image?

JD's words came back again:  
_that thing is poison, if you keep using it sooner or later it makes you wrong, but the thing that makes you even more wrong is having to decide who gets to, who lives and who has to die... when you live long enough with that kind of poison seeping into your ears, wondering what your little miracle cost you and wondering how many other people you should have saved and wondering whether the price you had to pay was worth it, wondering how you could have fucking broken all your promises to yourself about never going there again, you go fucking crazy, all right?_

Spoken with the absolute certainty of someone who has not only gone through it but watched another person whom he loved endure the same thing.

Spence shivers.

On an op, a time would come when you knew enough, before you knew too much, so much that it made you a liability. He'd crossed that line on the way back from Seattle, in the car. He just hadn't known it until now.

How comfortable would the deadly and dangerous Batshit Jack be with his secrets spread out on a platter in Spence's mind?

But sanity reasserts itself: you're not dealing with O'Neill. You're dealing with JD, who takes care of AJ and Cam, who hauled your broken self into a sarcophagus to put you back together, who trusted you to hold him together and to take care of the job if he'd been snaked. You're dealing with JD, who trusts you more than anyone but Cam. JD, whom Cam trusts entirely.

O'Neill owes him for this. He'll take care. JD will make sure of it, if necessary, not that it should be. Batshit Jack takes care of his own, and Spence surely is one of his own now.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

He curls back up and sleeps dreamlessly until morning, when JD knocks on the door to go to breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> A missing scene from Synecdochic's _A Howling in the Factory Yard_, and the prologue to _Roll With It_.


End file.
